


Viscaria Oculata

by deskclutter



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Deathfic, F/M, multiple character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:49:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The flowers in the graveyard watch people come and go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Viscaria Oculata

  
Madcap stems string themselves along the garden fence, tugging the wooden slats apart and down as though to giggle incoherent secrets in unseen ears. Intermittently, blossoms form loudspeakers for the deaf fence that rings around the yard. They riot in bright colours of red, yellow, orange, and the morning glory sleep until the dawn before sedate purple joins in. Green runs rampant within the walls, manifesting as moss, ivy, various unidentifiable leaves and creepers around the headstones. There is only one corner where the greenery behaves itself, and the modest headstone looks relatively new, when compared to the rest.

Every week, a blacksmith visits the grave. His lips twitch wryly when he looks at the unkempt state of the rest of the graveyard, and he almost decides, every week, to clear it when he has the time, but the dandelions stare at him mournfully because the wind took off their full load of fluffy heads, and their sad, bare looks change his mind. The plants rejoice. The blacksmith sighs and reflects that the only reason he cleared the space around the corner his boy sleeps in is because he would have appreciated the wild mess only from afar. There has only been one bright mess he ever let into his life when he lived, and the boy always guarded her jealously. He was happier for it, and his father the blacksmith is glad enough of that not to regret having given the boy free lease of his life.

When he returns to his smithy, he casts iron into the forge. He crafts a practical chair frame almost without thinking and is startled when he realises he has fashioned the faint hint of wildflowers twining along its arms.

  
The boy's sister-figure does not visit with the same frequency, due to her current residence in a different town. She comes perhaps every three months, sometimes with her husband, sometimes without. The flowers smile shyly at her as she sits to tell him of her news in spring one year. They have only just begun the usual antics of blooming; yesterday there were a few brief showers that resulted in afternoon dew and the first quiet bluebells and violets are interspersed along the ground at such frequent intervals that they resemble a pattern in a carpet.

The air is soft with mist, and she tells him, "I will be having a baby in seven months."

"I will read your stories to him or her. My baby will love hearing them."

"How do I know? Because _I_ love them. Didn't I tell you so many times when you were still alive?"

"I'm so glad your friend persuaded you to write again."  
__

_Do you love him?_

"He makes me happy. I think I am lucky to have known love and found happiness, even if they aren't in the same person. Not everyone is lucky enough to find love and be happy with it."

Her words hang in the air like the drooping blooms of the foxglove long after she leaves, and the air busies with the business of growing, crowding around the careful secrets like layers and layers of tissue paper before they are stowed away to be examined another day.

  
A distant cousin of the boy in the grave turns up from time to time to mutter angrily at the headstone. The flowers greet him curiously, freshly cut and placed carefully before the grave by the blacksmith. It is always the same rant, although the flowers are not the same, nor are the leaves or the snow when it comes. Neither is the cousin, but he always finishes up with "—you could at least have left some form of memoir!! Some information, such as the paper you used, your favourite time for writing…you didn't even leave your pen behind."

The flowers regard the cousin with some amusement, even when he adds, "You never did tell me why you stopped writing. I guessed, and I was _definitely_ right, but you promised to tell me and you didn't." They would never guess that he is a world famous pianist now, but summer does not care for such things, and neither does spring, nor winter, nor autumn. The wind sighs in the overgrown graveyard.

  
A ballet troupe comes to town. One of the dancers slips away every day to visit the little graveyard. Sometimes he is still in costume. He sweeps the ground around the headstone, which is becoming a little weathered, although not as much as the others. Sometimes he comes with the blacksmith and they lay flowers before the grave; careful bouquets of green amidst the crisp reds and browns of autumn. The leaves fall in quick descent and the dancer catches one. "A wish…?" he asks. He can't quite remember if it's a wish or if it's for good luck, but the one who could tell him is sleeping beneath the ground.

"I think it's a wish," says the blacksmith.

"Hmm," the dancer answers.

Sometimes the dancer comes alone, and he dances. The leaves fall and flurry around him as he turns and twists. His hands flare out. "Love is the key," he informs the headstone, although he is fairly certain his old friends knew. They probably found it out before the dancer. He tells them that he is Lohengrin and the leaves crunch beneath his heels as he paces towards the headstone. He wonders if the papers they buried with the body remain as dry as the brittle taste of autumn. They hadn't known he had drawn as well as written, and it was almost a crime to bury those sketches with him, although they had published the rest, but it had been his last wish. There had been a ballet dancer dancing across the paper. He had seen her before, but now she looked older as she smiled and danced a pas de deux on her own. On the very last page, a hand had caught hers.

They had laid the dance in the coffin with his too-young body, an old dream put to rest with him, although his wife had glanced out where a duck's body lay in the frozen ground.

It is autumn and the dancer watches the V-shaped flight of a flock of geese in the sky. "Raven blood runs in my veins," he says suddenly. "But I am not a raven." Birds fly south for the winter. He wonders where south lies, for them. He doesn't think they need the good luck or the wish any more than he does.

There is a slight chill in the air, but the flowers, withered with the leaves, do not feel it. The dancer is gone, and the colour of autumn fills the air as the leaves drop from the branches. In the distance children laugh and crash into leaf piles. There are pumpkins being carved and candles to light up jack-o-lantern grins.

  
The troupe stays until the spring, but the princess does not go to the graveyard. She maintains that it is much too out of her way and if she is to visit them she would rather go to the grave of the white duck who lived for ten good years or so after the end of the princess' story. To the princess, they buried both together on the night that the duck died. His physical body barely lasted more than a month after her. The princess wonders what it would be like to have one's heart buried deep in the ground and shivers at the thought. Naturally, it will never happen to her.

The wind cuts cheerfully through the air, and she huddles into her coat. The snow gives way beneath her feet. She marks the clear expanse of white as she walks down to the frozen lake. She imagines the storm last night and shivers with disdain at the thought of being out in the cold. She declines to think of the way her children greeted the morning with shouts of glee, and how they are most probably tumbling into the snow drifts with great abandon at this very moment. Their father is carelessly indulgent of them in his manner, as her father never was of her.

It is very quiet. The branches lie bare and the wind ceases its cheeky sallies at the hem of her coat. She arrives at the lake with her footsteps marking her trail behind her. What happened when the duck could not paddle at the lake in the winter? The princess knows the answer. The writer had many drawings of the duckling in the winter. Occasionally, the princess will take out the published book of drawings and trace the growth of her best friend from a clumsy duckling into an equally clumsy duck. Her husband once tried looking for the writer's self portrait, to no avail. She tried to comfort him, and he had smiled and said, "But he is there, in every stroke he drew of her."

With mitten-clad hands, she sweeps the snow gracefully from the tombstone. "It is too cold to dance," she informs the stone. "You'll have to make do with the ballet I showed you in the autumn."

The silence is empty without the duck to fill it with meaningless chatter. "The children are fine," the princess says at last, because that is what her friend would have asked about first of all. "Everyone is fine, as they were yesterday and the day before."

Ehehe, says the other, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly. But they could have gotten sick or fallen down in the night!

The princess sniffs. "That isn't likely." Honestly, what sort of person thinks of such things! She speaks a little longer, then stands and brushes herself off. The snow clings stubbornly to her mittens, which is a minor annoyance. "I shall return tomorrow."

Promise?

"How pointless to ask," the princess says.

On the way home, snowflakes dance down playfully. The princess clicks her tongue in annoyance and the wind laughs, teasing her by blowing the flakes against her face. In the distance she hears the laughter of her family and resolves, this time, to avoid the snowballs. The snow falls, and the footsteps fill, but tomorrow is another day, and the wind has until the spring to prevail against the protection of the winter overcoat.

  
_It wasn't a stretch to let go. She had only died a few weeks ago, and it felt like his heart had gone with her. It wasn't broken, because he had given it to her long ago, and she was skilled in taking care of hearts, but he wanted to find it again, so he let go of his life. Let them write their own stories, he thought, but they had been doing so for a long time already and the selfish thought passed.  
_

_The few accounts of death he found described the process as an altogether indescribable experience, which wasn't helpful at all. Most, however, agreed on a light at the end of a tunnel. The idea did not appeal to him, because he associated flashes of light with her disappearance, but he supposed that it was better than nothing at all.  
_

_It came as a shock, therefore, when he found, not a tunnel, but the light immediately in his face, which is why when he saw her standing in the light, he felt a sort of wild panic and made a grab for her. He missed, but her hand caught his before he overbalanced. "Hello, Fakir," she said, smiling.  
_

_He turned her hand over, noting that it was a hand and not a wing. "Ahiru. Dance with me."  
_

_She blinked. "We haven't danced in a long time."  
_

_"Of course not, idiot. You were a duck," he reminded her, but he was smiling too. She made a face at him, and he pulled her into his arms, and they danced._

* * *

  
[Viscaria Oculata](http://home.comcast.net/~bryant.katherine/flowuz.html) (you'll have to scroll a bit): Will you dance with me?

Unbelievably corny, I know, but considering the imagery, it fit.


End file.
